Happy Anniversary

Two years ago today White Smoke rose from a chimney atop the Sistine Chapel (link here). One person’s Friday the Thirteenth today is another’s occasion to celebrate the second anniversary of Pope Francis’ assumption of the papacy. I note here also how the days of the week wander as time moves relentlessly on. Two years ago this day was Wednesday. Next year it will be Sunday—what with the leap year inserting a day and leaping over the Saturday that waits in vain. Saturday will have its chance eventually—but not until 2021, the eighth anniversary of Francis’ papacy, if he lives that long (namely 85). What does one say on such days? Many happy returns?

Urbi et Orbi

That Latin phrase must please all those with even a weak ear for the poetic. The words are big this morning because the papers are reporting the Pope’s address to “City and World” (or “City and Earth”); it is the Pope’s Christmas address. It happens to be newsworthy, this year, because, in praying for peace, Pope Francis included the following sentence: “And I also invite non-believers to desire peace with that yearning that makes the heart grow: all united, either by prayer or by desire” (link). Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal rendered “non-believers” as “atheists,” perhaps because that word is more dramatic; but never mind that. In the spirit that Pope Francis urges, I enfold the media in a peaceful embrace today.

I had been under the impression that “Urbi et Orbi” goes back to ancient Rome as an early sort of “State of the Union” address. Turned out I was wrong. Wikipedia dates the address to the thirteenth century and the reign of Pope Gregory X. Wiki then adds a reference to the Polo family (whose most famous member is Marco). Soon after Gregory’s election, Niccolo and Matteo Polo brought him a message from Kubla Kahn, and the Pope then responded to it. Some people, anyway, link this fact to the name of the Christmas message—although, seems to me, the Pope is always addressing the earth, not just the City of Rome.

Urbs, in Latin, simply means “city”; the origin of that word is not know, but, seems to me, might be a modification of orbis, meaning circle, ring, hoop, or disk. Online Etymology Dictionary notes that the “circle” had begun to transform itself into a “sphere” or a globe by the thirteenth century already (in Old French)—thus by Gregory’s time. Galileo didn’t arrive until the sixteenth and died in the seventeenth century. To us in the twenty-first, “orb” certainly means a sphere and no longer a circle. And as that geometrical concept has expanded, so has our concept of peace, at least as Pope Francis sees it. It has claims on all of us, believers or unbelievers alike.

White Smoke

At just a few minutes after 2 p.m. today, as Brigitte and I were watching CNN, smoke began to issue from a temporary chimney above the roof of the Sistine Chapel. The smoke was white and hence we knew: Habemus Papam. Media speculation went on for just about an hour before, at last, Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, the senior cardinal deacon of the Church announced the Pope’s name: Pope Francis. Until this event, he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. We were both immensely pleased by this choice. And it happened on the perfect day, for Ghulflings: the 13th. Bergoglio was also ordained on the 13th, December 13, 1969. Multiple firsts surround him: the first pope born outside of Europe (not counting Peter); the first Jesuit—and a Jesuit who chose St. Francis’ name as his, the first ever Francis. On a more personal note, he is also the first pope ever who is younger than we are. He was born on December 17, 1936; I was  then a baby five months old. We both send him blessings and prayers…as the caravan marches on.

My image is a snap from an ITV YouTube video available here. Too bad that none of the three seagulls, who had amused us for two hours, one after the other, as we waited for the conclusion of the last, of five, votes stuck around for the smoke. Perhaps we were watching, glued to the screen, because we’d had an intuition this was it. And Brigitte, whose second sight is sharper than mine, had actually guessed whom the College of Cardinals would choose. But as often happens with her, she hasn’t the faintest how she knew…

Added Later: Alas, I'm not well-informed about papal history. Therefore I repeated, without thought, the notion that Pope Francis is the first non-European pope after Peter. Herewith a corrective from the Washington Post (link).